Ford’s Efficiency and Emissions Internal Investigation in Progress

xcel · Mar 24, 2019

Working hard to get ahead of any future fines/Regulation, Ford moves forward on its own accord.

Wayne Gerdes – CleanMPG – March 21, 2019

Kim Pittel, Group VP, Sustainability, Environment & Safety Engineering, Ford.

“In September, a handful of employees raised a concern through our Speak Up employee reporting channel regarding the analytical modeling that is part of our U.S. fuel economy and emissions compliance process.

At Ford, we believe that trust in our brand is earned by acting with integrity and transparency. As part of this, we have a process for looking at how we perform and behave in our broad and complex company.

As a result of the concern, we have taken a number of actions. Specifically:

We have hired an outside firm to conduct an investigation into the vehicle road load specifications used in our testing and applications to certify emissions and fuel economy.

Road load is a vehicle-specific resistance level used in vehicle dynamometer testing, including for fuel economy ratings and emissions certifications. Road load is established through engineering models that are validated through vehicle testing, including physical track tests referred to as coast down testing.

Ford has retained independent industry technical experts as part of our investigation team.

We are hiring an independent lab to conduct further coast down testing as part of our investigation.

Ford also is evaluating potential changes to our road-load modeling process, including engineering, technical and governance components.

This week, we voluntarily shared these potential concerns with Environmental Protection Agency and California Air Resources Board officials.

The investigation and potential concerns do not involve the use of defeat devices in our products. At this time, there’s been no determination that this affects Ford’s fuel economy labels or emissions certifications.

We plan to work with regulators and the independent lab to complete a technical review. As part of our review, we have identified potential concerns with how we calculate road load. The first vehicle we are evaluating is the 2019 Ranger; we are assessing additional vehicles as well.

As always, we strive to be transparent with our customers, employees, dealers, shareholders and other stakeholders. We understand how important it is to all audiences that we thoroughly yet swiftly complete this investigation.”
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We have known there were problems with the EPA results going back for at least 5 years and it appears as if Ford is going to finally do something about it.

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Ford’s Efficiency and Emissions Internal Investigation in Progress

xcel PZEV, there's nothing like it :) Staff Member

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Ford’s Efficiency and Emissions Internal Investigation in Progress

xcel PZEV, there's nothing like it :) Staff Member

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